Artist Brian Michael Riley, aka "The Marshmallow Man", works on one of his "Beautiful Disasters" series of paintings in his apartment/artist's studio at Read's Artspace in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Thursday, April 10, 2014. Riley has been arrested twice for tagging city buildings with his marshmallow happy face signature.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds

A "Marshmallow Man" painting by Bridgeport artist Brian Michael Riley hangs in the gallery at Read's Artspace in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Thursday, April 10, 2014. Riley says the painting represents the love between himself and his son.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds

Artist Brian Michael Riley, aka "The Marshmallow Man", works on one of his "Beautiful Disasters" series of paintings in his apartment/artist's studio at Read's Artspace in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Thursday, April 10, 2014. Riley has been arrested twice for tagging city buildings with his marshmallow happy face signature.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds

He can't keep still, needs to smoke a cigarette to relax and constantly pulls off his baseball cap to run his fingers through his disheveled graying hair.

He hoped one day to become famous for either his art or his film experience -- but he never saw this coming.

He never saw the day he would be known around his Bridgeport hometown as the notorious Marshmallow Man.

Strolling into his studio apartment in the Read's Artspace building downtown, he walks past at least a dozen marshmallow faces.

They're the subject of the artwork hanging in the hallway outside his apartment.

The square faces are painted among the graffiti on the walls inside his home. There are two spray-painted on the ground near the sunlit corner where he creates his art. There's even one drawn on a paper hanging on his refrigerator.

Some of them look just like the ones tagged on public spaces throughout the city, on buildings, street signs and underpasses.

They've become his logo, his signature.

Riley stops and takes a seat in a chair beside a row of wooden frames leaning against the wall waiting for his next masterpiece. Hanging on the wall in front of him is what he calls his beautiful disasters.

The paintings -- swirls and splotches combined with baby powder, cinnamon and other textured substances -- reflect the mixture of emotions bubbling up inside the artist.

The former theater director is now in the midst of his own "beautiful disaster," the marshmallow has gotten him in trouble.

A Bridgeport native, the 44-year-old has been part of the theater and art scene in this city for more than a decade.

But since his February arrest on charges of defacing city property, he has found himself on the outside looking in at a logo that can't rescue him or his career.

Birth of a marshmallow

Ironically, the marshmallow tag started as a way to bring consistency and stability to Riley's artistic life.

"It started as a joke, actually," Riley said, noting he was talking to his cousin one day about marshmallows coming in a can -- a neighbor long ago had told them they actually did.

"My attention span was very sketchy so I said I'm just going to do this year after year," he said. "It connects with people and they become invested in this thing that is a smiling marshmallow. Good times."

When his first marshmallow painting was sold at a City Lights Gallery show a few years ago, Riley decided to market the design on T-shirts and other merchandise on his website, www.bmriley.com.

"Someone said he's cute but he's not cutesy," Riley said, talking about the marshmallow. "I thought that was his charm, that he's not perfect."

The former Bridgeport Theater Company director -- he was fired after his bust -- now spends his time at home, painting, hanging out with his new "boys," members of the underground graffiti movement in New York and Connecticut, and trying to stay away from police.

The first time he got arrested he was angry.

It might have all been avoided if his girlfriend had been with him. She would have erased the little marshmallow face he drew in the snow above his signature on the holiday window display at the Bijou Theater.

But she wasn't there.

Call it fortunate or unfortunate -- he hasn't decided which yet -- Michael Moore, president of the Downtown Special Services District, saw it and noticed it happened to match the little faces spray-painted on public spaces throughout the city.

"I stopped once I received the email from Michael Moore," telling him to desist, Riley said. But then he posted a sarcastic comment on Facebook about the DSSD not having a sense of humor.

Moore didn't think that was funny. The police were called and an arrest warrant issued.

"Graffiti that is on public or private property, that is on signage or public amenities like benches we try to address as quickly as possible because it kind of connotes as a negative image of the downtown," Moore said last week. "We want to show it as a well-maintained downtown."

Renegade and underdog

Cigarette in hand, Riley pulls off his dark baseball cap. The arrest led the theater company to fire him. Now he's unemployed.

Then he laughs, sarcastically. Because it was graffiti that led the Bridgeport native's father to decide to leave this city when Riley was in the third grade.

"I remember the moment we found graffiti on the side of our house," he said. "My dad was just impacted by it."

Soon after, the family moved to Monroe. When he graduated high school, Riley attended the University of Miami, where he received a bachelor's degree in theater directing and screen art in 1992.

"I went to college wanting to come out as Spielberg but then, by the time I was out, I wanted to be more David Lynch," he said, referring to the director of off-beat movies and television series such as "Twin Peaks," "Eraserhead" and "Dune."

Riley, who has directed local plays and acted theater in Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles, said he is is inspired by Quentin Tarantino of "Pulp Fiction" fame.

"I like renegades," he said. "I like underdogs. The brilliant, misunderstood guys who work against the system -- legally."

After graduation, Riley moved to San Francisco before deciding to take the leap to Los Angeles. He lived there for 10 years. He got married and divorced there. He worked for Castle Rock Entertainment there.

"It was a total trip to be in the elevator with Rob Reiner and (Arnold) Schwarzenegger and Sandra Bullock," he said, laughing.

Then he turns serious again: The City of Angels is also where he could have died.

"I think that if I did not leave there I'd probably be dead," he said. "All I wanted was more. I'm in recovery (from drugs and alcohol) and since last November I've been struggling with that."

Beautiful disaster II

In 2001, Riley came back home to Bridgeport and worked on getting clean.

But last year his life got in the way of his recovery.

"I was sober for 7 years and last year it was just one thing after another after another and it just got the best of me," he said.

Although he had not been drinking when he drew the marshmallow on the window display, Riley admits that was not the case when he was arrested for a second time a week ago.

He was caught with paint in his hand and a pool of paint in the middle of John Street. He was charged with third-degree criminal mischief, a misdemeanor.

In the patrol car, he drunkenly told the officer he did it for love.

He laughs at himself, before deciding he did do it for love.

The marshmallow is about love.

"How could you regret making people smile?" Riley asked. "I did say it's all for love and it kind of really is. It's a goof, you know. It's a smiling face."

So why, knowing his previous case could have been dismissed, did Riley pour the pastel paint onto the street? For the same reason he went on his marshmallow graffiti blitz?

"I don't know," he said, quietly before pausing. "I think it's an experiment with chaos. I have found that the more you go against the system the more the system retaliates. Right now I'm a monkey. That's why we're sitting here because this is charming and it's funny. People like to watch beautiful disasters."

Although he claims not to be angry at anyone for the situation he has found himself in, Riley can't help just being angry.

"You drive down Main Street and it's all graffiti and you drive on I-95 into the city and it's all graffiti (on empty buildings)," he said. "I mean what's beautiful and what's not? And much of what's been happening is exactly why I would be dead in L.A."

The difference, according to Moore, is the graffiti on Main Street was curated and done in coordination with the city, not placed illegally with permission from no one.

S'more artists

So what's next for Riley?

In May, he graduates from the University of Bridgeport with a degree in education. After doing an internship in Stratford, he was dismissed from one in Seymour.

"They found that I was too kid-friendly," he said, apparently referring to his childlike artistic approach to teaching. Then he stood up, cursing and seemingly letting out some of his frustration.

Now he's not sure he wants to work in the public school system, which he believes stifles children's creativity by focusing solely on facts for tests. It's the exact opposite of what he hopes to do.

"I know I want to nurture the next generation of artists and children," he said.

Steve Gerber, general manager of the City Lights gallery, said he believes Riley may already be doing that. He said his use of social media and technology to promote his art has served to draw in the younger generations.

"I think he's kind of got his finger on the pulse of what's happening today," Gerber said. "He's very contemporary."

But Riley said his true passions are acting and directing.

"I love film and I want to make movies," he said. "I think that's next because it's a lot more quiet. You know nobody is going to arrest me for making movies."

But then, in the next breath, he laments never going abroad. Maybe he'll teach English in Japan. Why Japan? Why not, he said.

For now, he will focus on creating his next pieces for the City Lights same-sex show in June.

What he won't be doing is adding to the marshmallow faces still popping up around town, which he said he is learning may be a way for other graffiti artists to show their respect and support.

"What's been happening since (the arrests), the only responsibility I claim for is having created this thing," he said.